Assault case involving teacher ends
A Surprise Police Department investigation into allegations of sexual assault and a fistfight involving teenagers and a teacher has been closed with no arrests.
A Dysart Unified School District high school teacher was placed on leave in February and resigned in March amid allegations of inappropriate contact with students and questions about whether he had been physically assaulted by students.
The teacher was placed on leave the day after a Snapchat video emerged appearing to show a group of teens beating a man they alleged was a “pedophile.” The video circulated among Surprise teens and adults, sparking gossip and concern.
The police report for the incident, which acquired this week, reveals new details, including one teen’s accusation that the teacher sent him explicit messages and sexually assaulted him, as well as witness statements that teens beat the teacher and left him with a black eye.
is not naming the teacher because, although he has been accused of a crime, he has not been arrested or charged.
A video posted to Snapchat Feb. 22 shows a group of people appearing to assault another person, although the video is so dark it is hard to tell what is going on.
The video, which viewed but is not publishing because it may show minors or victims of a crime, is in two parts.
One part shows what appears to be teen boys laughing and talking about plans to set up and “beat” a “pedophile.” In another part, which appears to be at night, a voice can be heard saying, “Don’t hurt him too bad” and “Get him out of here,” amid sounds of kicks or punches.
The police report includes a woman’s account of seeing six or seven teen boys beating an adult man in her front yard around 8 or 9 p.m. Feb. 22.
She yelled at them to get out of her yard and then the teens started running away, “yelling that the person was a teacher and a pedophile,” the report said.
The man got up, walked back to his car near the park, and “backed up to leave the area, so she was not able to obtain a license plate.”
The day after the reported assault, a dozen students reported the video to school administrators, saying they believed the victim was a teacher from their high school, according to an administrator’s account in the police report.
A colleague texted the teacher to ask if he was OK, and the teacher replied, “Physically, yes. For sure. Mentally, I’m not,” and that he was talking with a lawyer, the police report said.
A few days later, according to the report, the teacher had dinner with colleagues, who noted that he “had a black eye” and “scrapes on his hand,” and did not talk about the incident or investigation beyond telling them “you can’t ask me for info.”
Within two weeks of the assault, other teachers at the school said the teacher had moved to Florida.
The teacher sold his Surprise home in May, according to property records. The teacher’s home address is now a post office box in Florida, according to a database.
Police did not pursue charges related to the assaultbecause the teacher never has spoken with policeand has not come forward as a victim, Surprise Police spokesman Tim Klarkowski said.
“We don’t have a victim that’s willing to participate in the case in any capacity, so we don’t have a prosecutable offense at that point,” Klarkowski said.
The teacher has not spoken publicly about the investigation. His lawyer did not reply to a request for comment from
In an interview with police, a minor said he assaulted the teacher because the teacher was coming on to him sexually.
The boy, whose name was redacted in the police report because he is a minor, said he received messages on Snapchat from a username he didn’t recognize. One of the messages offered the boy $100 to do a sex act.
The boy said he “told the person to leave him alone and then he wanted to figure out who the message was from,” the report said.
He messaged the person and set up a meeting in a park, and invited his friends to stay nearby in case the person he was meeting attacked him.
He waited in the park, and the person that showed up was his former teacher, he said.
The boy told police that the teacher tried to touch him inappropriately. Surprise police redacted the description of what specifically the boy said the teacher did, only saying it was “describing something sexual.”
The boy punched the teacher in the face, he said, and the teacher tried to punch him back.
In a message the boy later sent to a friend, he wrote “he gave me money and he tried to grab me and I hit him in the face and he ran and me and my homies that were hiding chased him,” and “my homies grabbed him and pulled him down and 2 of us (beat) him.”
Police did not pursue charges against the teacher due to lack of evidence, Klarkowski said.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah, this guy did this to me,’ but there’s no evidence whatsoever that supports that,” he said. “For us to make an arrest we have to be able to prove probable cause, and that would require some form of physical evidence, digital evidence, corroboration.”
The police report includes a search warrant for Snapchat accounts associated with the investigation, but Snapchat has not responded, Klarkowski said.
Police could reopen the case if more information emerges.